HTC One X+ (AT&T) Review

HTC’s fourth-quarter refresh of the One X is good, but is it good enough to keep you from waiting for the next tier of hardware?

When first holding an HTC One X+ (or any One device, for that matter) in your hand, it's hard to believe that the company has had such abysmal sales figures the past several quaters. It arguably has one of the best screens on the market, paired with an upgraded Tegra 3 processor and bumped up internal storage of 64GB. On top of all that, the device is downright gorgeous. It really does seem like it checks all the boxes.

The One X+ seems every bit a capable high-end device as its competition, much the same way as the original One X from earlier this year. Should it be considered as your next device? Read on and you may have a better idea if it's the right choice for you.

Some of the best hardware on the market, period. Design and screen are top-notch, backed up by a fast Tegra 3 processor and 64GB of unpartitioned storage. Camera produces great results with time and proper lighting, and acceptable ones in low light.

Whether you enjoy the visual flare or not, Sense is a bit bloated and maybe over-designed at this point in the game. AT&T really piles on the bloatware apps. LTE is blazingly fast if you have it in your area, but the price is paid in battery life.

If you make your decisions based solely on hardware and camera performance, and need a smartphone now, it's hard to recommend against the One X+ on AT&T. If Sense is bloated enough to turn you away from the otherwise lovely design and specs, then you may be better off waiting for next year's top-tier options.

Inside this review

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For the most part, you’re looking at the same hardware specs here as the original One X. We’ve got the same beautiful 4.7-inch 720x1280 SuperLCD2 display up front, 8 megapixel BSI camera around back, 1GB of RAM and sealed polycarbonate shell holding it all together. Under the hood, HTC has taken the original One X and bumped things up in two notable spots -- processor and storage.

Instead of the Snapdragon S4 found in the original One X for AT&T, HTC has gone back to the Tegra 3 that was offered in the international version of the original. It’s an AP37 (the newer, faster unit) clocked at 1.7ghz -- it’s a worthy processor for this device. On the storage front, HTC has taken out all the stops and gone straight to 64GB of internal storage. There’s no SDcard here, and that’s just how it should be. It means that the One X+ has no partitions, and you have full access to every bit of storage -- except what's being used by the OS -- for any file type you want.

Build Quality

The One X+ feels as good as it looks, and to my eyes -- and hands -- that’s pretty darn great. Starting on the front of the device, you’re greeted by a drilled speaker grill -- with a fancy LED hidden in one hole -- at the top of the device with a front-facing camera to the right of it and AT&T logo underneath. The glass covering the screen is rounded off the edges gracefully, making it feel fantastic when swiping in from the bezels. The bottom of the screen is accented with three capacitive keys -- back, home and multitasking.

You’ll find the left side of the device has just a micro-USB port near the top of the side, and a volume rocker directly opposite it on the right. The bottom is clean, save for a pinhole microphone. The top of the One X+ is the busiest, and you’ll find a headphone jack, Micro SIM slot, power button and a secondary pinhole mic on it. The SIM is removed with a small tool (aka paperclip) like so many devices today, and seals up nicely as well. The best way to describe the button layout on the One X+ is “suboptimal at best.” No matter how you design it, a top-mounted power button just isn’t going to work on a device this large anymore. Also, the volume keys -- while nicely placed -- are almost impossible to reliably activate because they are so flush with the side of the phone. It makes me wonder if anyone at HTC actually tried to use the phone for an extended period of time before finalizing the design.

The back of the device is a smooth, single piece of black polycarbonate with a bit of a “soft touch” feel to it. The edges are all round, save for flattened spots on the sides and a recessed HTC logo in the middle of the back. The camera pod is raised up a few millimeters from the case, but the lens itself is recessed lower than the lip of the pod to save it from scratches when it sits on a table. There’s a single LED flash flanking the lens on the right side. Below the aforementioned HTC logo, you’ll find a small gray Beats logo and another finely drilled set of holes for the rear speaker. There are five “pogo pins” on the back for wireless charging docks.

One quick thing I find important to note is that there is only a single AT&T logo on the phone, and it’s the small one at the top of the device. I applaud HTC here for keeping the device nearly unscathed by carrier silkscreens, in a time where Verizon is completely bastardizing its devices.

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I just can’t say enough good things about the hardware and design on the One X+. Quips about the button placement aside, the hardware is downright fantastic. The One X+ has a design that makes you not care about the physical dimensions of the device, because all that matters is how it fits in your palm and feels when you use it. There's often a tradeoff in design between beauty and ergonomics, and HTC has walked that line nicely with this device.

The solid polycarbonate construction and finely milled edges around the screen and buttons will make you shudder to think of going back to chintzy plastic handsets of other manufacturers. You’re going to really feel like you got what you paid for when you chose to get a high-end device like this.

Display

Oh my, what a display.

You’ll read and hear a lot about HTC’s recent smartphone displays, but you really can’t appreciate it fully until you use one. The Super LCD2 panel really is an industry-leading screen that other manufacturers should be striving to beat (or even match.) The display is bright and crisp, with pixels that for all intents and purposes are invisible to the naked eye. It'd take a microscope to find jagged edges here.

The blacks aren't completely black, as is the one major downfall of LCD panels, but the color reproduction and brightness are so good I'm able to completely overlook that. The viewing angles are superb -- images don't distort or change colors even at angles that you'd never use the phone at. I have to give some credit for that to the laminated display, which puts the glass directly onto the screen, meaning there's no perceptible "gap" between the two.

This really is the best screen out there today.

Radios

You’ll find every expected radio in the device -- including but not limited to GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and NFC. I’m also happy to report that unlike Samsung, HTC seems to have not messed around with Android Beam, the stock implementation of NFC. Putting the One X+ back-to-back with my Galaxy Nexus I was able to send pictures, contacts, apps, locations -- anything I could find -- between the devices. Annoyingly, there's a huge NFC status bar icon whenever you have NFC enabled. It seems unnecessary to have it there permanently considering you're likely to have NFC on 100-percent of the time.

The one radio issue I found with the One X+ is its handling of Wifi during sleep. Alex reported similar findings in both his One X and One X+ reviews, and I'm sad to say that the same issues are here as well. After an indeterminate amount of time with the screen off, the Wifi on the device will turn off also. This happens regardless of the Wifi sleep policy setting, and is quite annoying because not only is the device missing out on push notifications, but it's also using more data if it switches over to the mobile network when you're not expecting it to.

The One X+ runs on AT&T’s LTE network, which in my experiences feels almost unnaturally fast. Living in the suburbs of Seattle, I regularly saw 30 Mbps or higher download, and 15 Mbps or higher upload everywhere I went. Even in Seattle, right in the heart of downtown or inside high-rise buildings, I would see the same speeds as I would in the less populated areas. AT&T seems to have seriously over-engineered its network in this area (Seattle / Tacoma) because the speeds are pretty remarkable.

A nice perk of AT&T’s LTE implementation is that the step down from and up to LTE is completely seamless to the user. In areas where LTE coverage hasn’t perfectly rolled out -- like the rural suburbs -- you’ll often switch between “4G” (HSPA+) and “4G LTE” without even noticing. I’ll take a drop from LTE to HSPA+ over LTE to EVDO (as on Verizon and Sprint) any day of the week. Going from 30Mbps (LTE) to 8Mbps (HSPA+) isn’t as noticeable as you’d think, especially when it doesn’t take 30 seconds or more to make the transition.

I’m still not completely sold on the necessity of LTE on a phone while we live in a world of extremely expensive (and capped) data plans, but if you’ve come to terms with how much it’s going to cost you to own an LTE device and use large amounts of data, then you should be happy that the networks are available. And as I’ll discuss next, your wallet isn’t the only thing that will take a hit because you have an LTE device...

Battery life

The One X+ bumps its battery size to 2100 mAh -- from 1800 -- but in my time with it I was still struggling to make a full day of normal usage. With my light usage I was able to push upwards of 12 hours before looking for an outlet, but with heavier use I saw closer 10 hours. I can compare this directly to my Galaxy Nexus (GSM) where 15 hours (3 hours screen-on) is normal, and I can push past 20 hours if I’m on Wifi. Even with the aggressive battery saving features in Sense, I still didn’t feel completely comfortable with how quickly the battery drained. At some point its really hard to understand why devices pack in so many features and specs when you can’t use it away from a wall charger for more than half a day.

Even with HTC's "power saver" mode turned on, which throttles back the processor, reduces the screen brightness, turns off vibration and turns of data when the screen is off (if you choose,) I saw no notable improvement in battery life. I appreciate that the option is there, but the fact that it is a persistent notification whether you've turned it on or not shows how self-conscious the device is about its battery drain. If you're going to pester me about the Power Saver mode 24/7, you might as well just make that the default setting and get rid of the notification. Users need to be able to make their own decisions about how to manage their devices, not be pestered every time they check their notifications to worry about their battery drain.

The combination of LTE data and the power draw of the screen really makes this device's battery life subpar overall. It’s late 2012, and we’re still faced with the tradeoff of battery life for LTE speeds.

Our own Alex Dobie gave a great walkthrough of HTC's implementation of Jelly Bean 4.1.1 and Sense 4+ on the One X+ available in Europe, and the software is nearly identical on the AT&T version:

This is the part of the review where the complete and utter praise starts to slow down a bit. I realize that software is such a personal choice -- there really is no "perfect" set of features -- but I just can't get into Sense. I think HTC deserves praise for being unapologetic about its design, creating software that feels holistically like "Sense," but that doesn't mean I have to like it. The best way to describe it is this: I've never been using stock Jelly Bean and said "you know what this could use? Random sweeping animations."

Unlike years past, HTC has some real competition in the form of stock Android since Ice Cream Sandwich was released. The manufacturer's latest hardware is absolutely top-notch, and I think a device this great deserves software just as high of quality -- and that isn't Sense 4+.

Launcher and interface

The Sense 4+ launcher is much the same as previous versions of Sense, but with quite a bit of the extra fluff taken out of it. Make no mistake though, this isn't anywhere near the stock Android launcher. Folders show a small grid of four icons, and open up horizontally. You still access widgets and customizations from a long-press on the homescreen -- a la Gingerbread -- but the dock is now a fixed 5-slot setup. The 4 apps of your choosing in the dock are now also accessible from the lockscreen by dragging them into the unlock ring, which is a handy feature. The app drawer is horizontally paginated, and categorized into 3 tabs at the bottom -- all, frequent and downloads. From the Menu key you can sort different ways as well as hide apps you can't uninstall.

HTC's continued reliance on hardware capacitive navigation buttons causes some issues with navigation when compared to the on-screen variety offered on Nexus (and some Motorola) devices. To access Google Now, a long-press on the Home button is in order, and the multitasking button now serves double duty.The most common setup will likely be a single press of the button for Multitasking, and a long press for Menu. If you prefer, you can change the actions in settings to reverse the short- and long-press actions, or have it give you a software Menu key when applicable.

Speaking of Multitasking, I have to put HTC's implementation in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" category. Instead of simply overlaying small previews of apps on the current homescreen, you're taken into a separate interface to view your most recent apps in a diagonal card-like view. The cards are difficult to scroll accurately, and the extra time spent going in and out of Multitasking really defeats the purpose of having a fast app switching interface.

Bundled apps

The One X+ Is a shining example of how much carrier bloatware can fit onto one device. At first boot, I went through and disabled 8 different AT&T apps, from “AT&T Code Scanner” to “YPmobile”, and hid another 7 in the app drawer that couldn’t be disabled. It is absolutely baffling to me that on such high end devices we’re still subject to this useless software.

On the HTC side, Sense is loaded up with its own set of apps with questionable usability. You’ll see Facebook and Twitter pre-loaded, along with a whole host of others such as HTC Watch, Notes and Task Manager. Most of these are generally useful -- unlike AT&T's apps -- but don't really need to be included on every handset. Much like the AT&T apps, most of these can't be uninstalled.

It’s a blessing that Android 4.x has implemented the disabling of pre-installed apps, and that there are launchers that can hide the rest, but that’s still no excuse for loading so much trash on our devices. These apps have a place, and it is in the Google Play store where willing users can download them at their own discretion.

Performance and usability

While using the device daily, I very rarely found anything that would result in hiccups or stutters. It does say something about the heft of Sense when you can actually find something that does give the system a big of lag though. Leaving apps and quickly interacting with the homscreen will sometimes lead to jarring stutters. The new Tegra processor really screams when you're playing Tegra-optimized games, but it still does just as well with "regular" apps and games as well.

As we saw on the original One X, HTC is still doing some pretty aggressive killing of apps in the background to free up RAM. This of course helps with smoothness in the launcher but has the side effect of causing many apps to reload, even though they've only been closed for a short amount of time. In a quest for free RAM, HTC has generally ruined the idea of Android multitasking. My Galaxy Nexus can handle multiple apps with 1GB RAM, there's no reason why this device can't as well. I would almost be able to forgive it if there was no lag to be found on the device, but as I note above this just isn't the case. It seems like a lose-lose proposition.

Pictures

With the combination of a high quality 8MP BSI (Backside Illuminated) sensor and extra ImageSense chip, the One X+ is capable of extremely nice photos. I say "capable" because just like any other camera (phone or otherwise), just pointing it at a subject and pressing the shutter isn't always going to give you mind-blowing results. Generally though, the results of random snapshots are acceptable, and you rarely get a picture that's so bad you'll have to retake it. The camera struggles a bit with focusing in low-light, as would be expected for a sensor so small, but I'd venture to say it performs better than other phones in similar conditions. Shots don't turn out grainy, but rather just blurry because of missed focus. In great lighting, the camera performs phenomenally. Even in auto mode, shots were crisp and clear in these situations.

An HDR (High Dynamic Range) mode is included, and it works, but it can often over-process and saturate pictures. I'm a fan of HDR when it's subtle, but many of the HDR photos I took turned out too overblown. Panorama is included here as well, and works about the same as stock Android 4.x -- with all of the same issues. The panoramas captured quickly, but fell victim to the same stitching and blur problems I see on other devices running stock Jelly Bean.

A great feature of the camera is the "continuous shooting" mode, which lets you just hold down the shutter as long as you want, capturing 20 photos sequentially by default. You're then given a filmstrip view of the pictures where you can select the best shot and delete the rest. It works fantastically with the fast shutter speed, and you get shots you may not otherwise have held onto.

The camera auto-focuses quickly, but unfortunately you can't long-press the shutter key to lock focus and exposure. Instead, you're stuck tapping the screen to focus. At first I assumed that if you turned off continuous shooting that you'd be able to use the shutter key to focus, but that turned out not to be the case. This is the one part of the camera app that could use some re-working.

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The camera interface is as good as you'd ever want on a phone, with common image adjustments such as ISO, exposure and white balance at the ready. There are also quick toggles to different shooting scenes under the settings menu (but I wouldn't recommend them.) You can shoot pictures or video without changing modes -- a nice touch -- as well as take pictures while shooting video.

Video

The One X+ shoots video at 1080P, and offers digital image stabilization -- which is on by default. The video looks pretty good, but digital stabilization can only do so much. Rest the phone on something and the results will improve dramatically over free-handing it.

Front camera

The front-facing camera works as well as it should for those occasional self portraits. By default, the shutter is tied to a 2 second timer, which is nice to help with positioning the phone for a blur-free shot.

Accessories

HTC includes a standard charging brick and USB cable in the box, both of which look like every other HTC power brick and USB cable the company has ever shipped. It may just be my devices, but the cable seemed to fit extremely snugly into USB sockets. Several times it took 2 hands -- one to brace the device and one to pull the cable -- to safely remove it from computers and wall sockets.

Also included in the box is a really nice metal SIM tray removal tool, which you’ll promptly lose in a couch cushion somewhere and find 3 years later.

There's no denying that HTC is eating every other manufacturer's lunch on hardware with the One X+. Unfortunately, the software setup on the device can be off-putting to some, and it really doesn't do the wonderful hardware justice. I sound like a broken record saying this about every device, but the One X+ would downright be a better choice if it were running the same software as a Nexus. I could easily consider this is as my secondary device simply from the standpoint of the hardware, data speeds and camera performance, but the one part of the phone I interact with the most -- the software -- keeps it in the second-place spot to even my Galaxy Nexus.

If Sense is your cup of tea, then there really is no better choice for a smartphone on AT&T right now. The HTC One X+ checks all of the boxes on hardware, performance and specs -- and looks damn good doing it. That's something the other manufacturers just haven't figured out yet.

Reader comments

HTC One X+ (AT&T) Review

Just upgraded to this from my Inspire 4g. So far, this phone has really impressed me. I might even leave Sense 4.1+ on it (although I rooted it a week after getting it, just to prove to my wife I could wait).

Loving the LTE (I live in San Antonio), loving the display, loving the SPEED.

You should NOT get anything from HTC until they stop with the Sense garbage. It's unreal how much Sense slows down your phone.

I put CM10 on my One X and it's easily twice as fast. Installation of apps is ridiculously fast compared to when I had Sense on the device and now that I got rid of the Sense garbage I no longer see "Reloading" on the homescreen after I've been an app for a long time.

Before I got the One X+, I would have agreed 1000% with this. I rooted that phone within the month and went straight to AOSPX. Before I upgraded, I had JB 4.2.1 (CodefireX) running on it (and, truth be told, it was kinda draggy. But, I understand why). That made a world of difference.

But now, with a quad processor, is it really that important? Make no mistake, at some point, I'll probably drop CM on the OneX. But it's not that important right now.

It's the same trail we all took with PCs...each iteration of Winblows drove the requirements for the next generation of hardware. No reason to believe it will be different with mobile.

I've got the Insertcoin Rom on my One X and its blisteringly fast with absolutely no slow down from Sense whatsoever and definitely no "reloading" message at any point, I don't see the point of installing vanilla when the benefits of Sense over it are very useful.

Even before I rooted my one x, I didn't notice any lag that slows it down dramatically... And ViperXL Rom from Team Venom show how good sense is, most stable and lag free rom (as far as sense roms)... Absolutely no lag, and battery is crazy good on it

You want to talk about lag, look at touchwiz on samsungs tablets.. Now that is horrible

Two words: custom launcher. Putting Apex on my EVO LTE has saved me plenty of headaches with those pesky home screen redraws. That being said, the multitasking sucks in ICS/Sense 4.1, so I switched to CM 10 a few days ago.

From what I hear (edit: what Alex Dobie once said in a podcast, contrary to Andrew Martonik's take), however, Jelly Bean/Sense 4+ fixes the memory management. I'll go back and try a Sense-based ROM just soon as HTC and Sprint release the update and devs get their hands on it.

No need to worry, because people aren't getting HTC phones to begin with, and whether fanboys want to accept it or not, the only reason HTC is going the way of RIM is because of Sense. The hardware is top notch, the designs are fairly attractive, and the devices are not anymore controlled by carriers than say Motorola or LG, the only difference is that cancerous growth they call Sense UI.

Look at Motorola and LG, they switched their UIs to a more AOSP look and feel, and they are already doing better on sales. If HTC doesn't learn how to take a hint they will go bankrupt.

My final words to HTC: no matter how many golden turds you crap out, they will still be turds at the end of the day.

I've never heard anything less true. Its because of MARKETING sir, not Sense. I have news, regular people don't care about Sense. And don't give me crap about how they do when it lags, because when HTC was profiting hand over fist it was by selling Sense loaded phones! They were doing well when they had that wonderful 'YOU' marketing campaign.

HTC will never give up Sense, get over it. And stop trying to warn them so if they fail you can just say 'I told you so' even though your initial prescription was far off the mark.

Keep this in mind, regular people don't care about stock, know what it is or what it looks like.

I have a One X with CM10 as well. Yeah it is faster, but there are a few drawbacks including the camera and battery life. (you can get close with battery, but still not perfect). Honestly though, you can vastly improve the speed of the phone by going with CleanROM if you would like to stick with a Sense ROM.

Personally I really enjoy the benefits of Sense and I haven't found it bloated in the slightest on my original One X (international version).

In fact having rooted it (which I tend to do with all my phones these days) I still use Sense Roms instead of going for a vanilla one, with these Roms I regularly get %60 battery at the end of the day with a full days average use and I'd imagine the X+ would be even better having the larger battery.

Its a lovely phone to use and hold in the hand, which is something I can't really say about most phones including the top dog of the moment.

Overall I'd recommend the One X+ as the best handset around to most people at this time.

I disagree with your assessment of the button setup. I'd prefer a power button on the side of my EVO LTE (or in the middle of the top, a la Droid DNA), but I can live with it on the top right just fine. Your criticism of the volume buttons may be deserved, however.

On the software, I generally agree with you. HTC Sense looks pretty, but it looks different from the Holo design of vanilla 4.x, making for an inconsistent look/feel. I like Sense's features (better core apps, improved lockscreen), but its performance annoys me too much. Slap CM 10 on HTC's hardware, and you've got yourself a winner.

I don't mind Sense, but I think it eats up battery and, of course, the gorgeous display will eat battery also. I like it that htc finally decided to put something reasonable by way of internal memory (64GB is very nice). However, if I can't make a full day (6am to 11pm) with a single charge (like Maxx or Note 2), then I don't want to even look at it. I just don't get it as to why htc doesn't get it about battery.

The main reason HTC is falling behind has nothing to do with Sense - in fact many HTC users actually like sense. HTC shot themselves in the foot by putting out a confusing array of 'HTC One' devices, with different hardware for each carrier. The Galaxy S3 has succeeded, because anyone who saw and liked it could get it on their carrier. If you're not on ATT, you can't get the One X. You can get something very similar, but then you've got to go and read all the reviews that say that something is a second-class sibling to the One X. Actually, the One S on T-Mobile had some advantages over the X, but you get the point. Way too confusing.

Exactly, it has nothing to do with sealed batteries or lack of SD card or Sense and everything to do with not putting out the same phone on every carrier they can. The Droid DNA should have been on every major US carrier at the same time but we have the One X+ and the Droid DNA and the One VX and this and that. If they ever want to compete with Samsung and Apple they need to emulate them in that sense, the One X should have been on every major carrier earlier this year and it would have been some real competition for the GSIII.

I agree I've been using cm10 on my captivate for so long and I have a nexus 7. AOSP doesn't look as appealing as Sense 4.0. I don't miss anything from jellybean while running ICS on my One X. IMO Google Now is a bloatware.

As for multitasking I didn't have many problems with it on the 2.20 update. On rare occasions I'd get a force close but all phones do that.

If you use a Bluetooth headset or Bluetooth car audio, be warned. There are many, many reports of terrible audio quality, and not just from me. Check out this web site and XDA Developers.

I bought the device the same day it came out and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, it had awful BT call quality. I tried all three devices in the store with no less than five different BT headsets, three of which were brand new from the store itself. Every one had awful call quality. It sounded like I was talking on a toy walkie-talkie inside a 55 gallon steel drum.

I absolutely LOVED everything else about it - it was exactly everything I was looking for. But this issue is non-negotiable for me, as I live on my BT headset. Now using a Galaxy Note 2 and digging it.

This has been my experience too. As you did, I also tried a variety of combinations (including several wired ones), and found Bluetooth audio quality to be substandard, ESPECIALLY during calls. Most of the forums where this has been brought up have replies which seem to address altogether different problems. Apps that I have tried to boost volume have NOT worked. One even suggested enabling an accessibility option on the settings. Unfortunately it was already enabled on my phone. (disabling the feature didn't fix it either)

I've had the HTC One X+ for a week now, picked it up on Monday from ATT replacing my Inspire 4G. Overall it's a awesome phone, it feels great in the hand, and the screen is beautiful only being beaten by the Droid DNA. While it's not running the latest specs it's still a fast and responsive phone. The battery life is decent when LTE isn't on, but I can't help but feel it could still be better or just optimized more (iPhone has a much smaller battery yet last just as long if not longer). The lack of a SD card slot was a critical missing feature on the One X with it's 16GB of storage, but with the One X+ HTC has solved the need of a SD card by giving this phone 64GB. The amazing camera on the One X has also been improved on both the hardware and software side.

The only real negatives I can think of is all the bloat that's installed, which when tested with the international model without the bloatware there is a clear performance difference in speed and battery life. Thankfully there is development going on at places like XDA that have already given root access and have a few custom ROM's available to give us the phone we should of got out of the box. There's also a issue (?) where the back of the phone around the camera lens gets "warm" when using LTE for a few minutes or running a app that puts the GPU into use like youtube or some games. Almost as if the new(ish) Tegra chip was just overclocked and had LTE bolted onto it.

There's also one minor annoyance (or personal preference) that's the power button should be on the side of the phone, not at the top, especially on these bigger phones. (Ironically all my phones have had the power button on top)

I'm not sure about this review, the fact that he says there is excessive bloatware is a joke. There is WAY less bloatware then what I had on my Samsung (Skyrocket) smartphone, about half as much. Also, this is my second HTC phone and there was still more bloatware on my Samsung than that smartphone.

Lastly, I have LTE service where I'm at and I still get almost 18 hours out of my phone with normal use. So not sure where this guy is living that reviewed the phone...LOL

Just because it has less bloatware than another device doesn't mean that there's no bloatware. I call 15 pre-installed AT&T apps and about half a dozen HTC apps qutie a bit of bloat.

Battery life is different for everyone, understood. But for my usage, my battery life was poor. I compare it to my Galaxy Nexus, which I used in the exact same way and got better battery life. And based on my speed results and information provided, you can see I live and visit areas with extremely good AT&T service. This is a best-case network scenario for battery life.

I'm curious what settings you had configured throughout the day that resulted in such poor performance. I had pretty great battery life on my One X despite its smallish battery. Maybe you had a funky unit.

My usual day is about 2-2.5hrs of screen-on time, again depending on the day. Very rarely any gaming, mostly just keeping up on email, social apps and texts/calls. If I tethered, it was for maybe 15min or I would be plugged in.

Agreed that the battery is pretty bad, but having a removable battery doesn't fix that. How is carrying multiple batteries any less of a hassle then just carrying a charger/cable around? Not to mention that when there's a removable battery its likely to be a smaller cell than the non-removable one. Adding a removable battery doesn't fix the battery issues on phones.

Not sure how removable SDcard support helps here. It just makes things worse. You have 64GB of internal, unpartitioned storage. What are you doing on your phone that needs more than 60GB of space? Adding an SDcard means going back to partitioned storage, even for the internal part, which just makes everything worse off.

But you still have to carry something extra, that's my point. Just because it may be slightly less of a hassle to swap batteries rather than use a charger doesn't mean that you should excuse battery issues in either case.

If sense didn't have they're ridiculous sense 3d effects and the inefficient multitasking, I would like it a lot more. I actually prefer touchwiz over sense just because it doesn't seem so resource hungry. Maybe it's just me but I could deal with touchwiz + a custom launcher but had to get a CM ROM for my HTC Inspire because I couldn't deal with sense. The Inspire is so much smoother, as smooth as a 1ghz snapdragon could be. I wish OEM's would follow what motorola is doing in making the UI closer to "stock" android and add features if they'd like. They make the best looking phones, I'm torn between this(with a custom rom of course) and the nexus 4!

It seems all the people reviewing smartphones do not test blue tooth sound quality in general. If so it would be mentioned as I have tested different BT models on this phone on this phone and they all sound horrible.
Media through BT is okay. It is voice calls that are corrupted.

When will you have the One VX review? I'm trying to get my brother to get one since he's already in the Android ecosystem.
/BTW I'm a WP8 guy
//Congrats to the SG3 for being the most important phone of 2012 on Gizmodo

Also made the move to One X+ from an Inspire that served me well and was running JB quite well when I retired her. Not a Sense fan either and totally agree with "custom launcher". Running Nova Launcher with JB theme and I forget Sense is even there.

Also, I can disable most AT&T apps in settings. They disappear from the "my apps" section and I never think about them. Does anybody know if they are still running in the background slowing this thing down? Not quite ready to root just yet.

Good job AT&T on LTE. That is about the same speeds I'm seeing on Verizon LTE in the Seattle area (mostly Eastside/Bellevue). But I have to wonder how you can call this the best display when the DNA is available. If I had not been set on having Phonus Maximus (Note II) I would have bought the DNA even with it's limited memory.

After Reading most of comment I seen Lot of them upgrade their phone from HTC Inspire 4G... Same here I also have HTC Inspire 4G and I like that size phone and screen. I also upgrade to HTC One X+.. and after rooting and uninstalling all those ATT crap My phone working great..... Just have some Heating issue when playing game for more than 30 min.... that rise phone temperature to 125 F. that time phone also start blinking green and red notification light..
Any one please guide me which custom ROM is Good for ATT one X+.

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